


Once It's Started

by orphan_account



Series: domestic fluff [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Anon asked me to write this, Awkwardness, Fluff, High School, I Don't Even Know, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his brother breaks up with Jake, Dave focuses on figuring out how to confess to his crush, Karkat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once It's Started

“Dave, have you seen your brother around?”

 

Your brother’s boyfriend’s voice pulls you out of your daydreams about Karkat kissing you. You quietly sulk for a moment, because it was a nice daydream. Dream Karkat was blushing like a tsundere anime girl and the cutesy little chaste kisses were slowly beginning to become more bold. You were 110% sure that Dream Karkat was about to climb into your lap or something and Dream Dave would be able to start fondling his butt. 

 

Your face feels hot for thinking that and you decide that Jake is a good enough distraction for now. Even if he is a bit of a bastard to Dirk.

 

You turn around and lean against your open locker. Inwardly, you hate Jake for being taller than you, but you remind yourself that eventually, you should grow as tall as your brother. Just wait a few more years. Patience, young Padawan. 

 

“You mean my brother Dirk, right? And you mean have I seen him around this school, right? And you mean have I seen him recently, probably within the last few minutes, or hour, right?” You fix Jake with an even stare, stuffing your hands into your pockets. One hand closes around your keys and the other brushes some loose change. 

 

Jake shifts from one foot to the other. He isn’t looking straight at you. “Ideally, a positive answer to that would help solve this dilemma.”

 

Your face instantly tightens. You don’t bother forcing it to relax. “Dilemma? What happened?”

 

“Er,” Jake chews nervously at his lip and stutters for a moment before saying, “I just--Have you seen him in the hour and a half?”

 

He’s not talking about what happened. So it’s something personal between them. Something that’s uncomfortable for him to share to others. But it resulted in him not knowing where Dirk is, and not feeling comfortable enough to ask Dirk’s friends, but instead to go directly to you, his brother. 

 

They broke up. And Dirk left the school. Going by how Jake wants to find him, Dirk was the one who broke up with Jake. Jake reacted in a way that frustrated Dirk and Dirk had to get the fuck out of Dodge High School, USA. 

 

Dirk’s out in the city somewhere with his phone turned off, so he doesn’t have to talk to Jake. You know he’s not going to go straight home, but he does have enough sense to be taking care of himself. For now. Still, he’s been tearing himself apart for Jake recently and he’s probably crushed right now.

 

You turn your back on Jake and get the last things you need from your locker. You shut it with a bit more force than necessary and shoot Jake one last cold look.

 

“I don’t think his **ex** has any business with him right now. If you ever cared about him and pretended to know him, you should know what’s going on with him now.” You leave him in the hallway and he doesn’t follow you. 

 

As soon as you’re around the corner and out of sight, you’re texting Roxy. 

 

..................................

 

Dirk’s still not telling you what he did after he left school that day, but he’s been looking a hell of a lot better, so you’ll leave it at that and return to your own problems.

 

Like not-stalking Karkat Vantas. 

 

Technically, it isn’t stalking if he invites both you and your mutual best friend to his house every day. There is no reason to even consider it’s stalking. Stalking is for creepy people who the person doesn’t know in real life. Or for people who are told to go away but keep coming back to fill their fantastical needs. Um... It’s more like... staking a claim. No, that’s stupid. 

 

You’re just waiting for the right moment to tell him you’re crazy about him. You’ll shower him with a million little petals from roses and read him Shakespeare sonnets that you’re currently being forced to read in English class and present him with food in the shape of a heart or his name and borrow Dirk’s motorcycle and take him to see the sunset and kiss him right as the sun paints the sky with all the colors of the wind. You want to walk him home for once and hold hands even though you live in Conservative America and light candles in his room and listen to him read his cheesy novels out loud without John suggesting to go back to his place so you can build a Lego castle. You want to give him one half of those couples necklace things and a million more flowers, one by one, every day, and love letters recorded as hip-hop mixes on CDs with pink heart stickers on them. You’ll get ice cream and share each other’s cones and lick stray smears off each other’s cheeks. You want him to swoon over you as much as you do over him. God, you’ve been thinking of this way too much.

 

You’ve been sitting with your head on the desk almost for the entirety of the class. Karkat’s not in this class, so you can’t enjoy staring at him and imagining hot, messy makeout sessions with him. 

 

Who are you kidding? You do that anyway. 

 

You’re such a wreck.

 

The bell rings and you get up to leave. You were supposed to be using this class time to finish up your individual projects, but you finished that a long time ago at Karkat’s place. Once the teacher had handed out the assignments, John and Karkat went crazy over the similar topics and spent hours working on all three projects together while you did your best to help before deciding that they were just way more interested in prehistoric biology than you were. You still drew dinosaurs for them, and you spent enough time making them look nice to consider that as a legitimate equal-effort contribution to the projects. 

 

And you got to listen to Karkat explain the topic to you repeatedly to make sure you understood it. Once he got a bit boring, you took the opportunity to point out sexual innuendos, which led to Kankri having to come in and drag Karkat away before he punched your face in.

 

Outside the classroom, you meet up with John and Karkat and begin the familiar walk to each of your lockers, which always follows with walking to Karkat’s apartment. It’s routine, and you wish so desperately to be able to break out of that routine and do couple things with Karkat some days and do bro things with John on other days. 

 

You want to kiss him and touch him intimately so much.

 

..................................

 

Today is the day.

 

You’re finally going to confess to Karkat. You have a bag full of rose petals in your backpack and you’re going to surprise him when the two of you get to his apartment. John is out on a doctor’s appointment, so this is the perfect opportunity. 

 

Nothing can mess this up.

 

You do your best to keep normal conversation with Karkat on the way to his place, but you’re so goddamn nervous and you’re so sure that he can tell. Or he thinks you’re worried about the test you took today in math class which you didn’t exactly study for and therefore crammed during the entirety of lunch while being distracted by the dumb paper airplane war that escalated into a fight between half the girls present. 

 

You breathe in and out, and realize that you haven’t said a word to Karkat for at least five minutes.

 

He glances at you with mild concern. “What’s wrong with you? For once, you’re not running your grating windhole faster than the speed of Superman.”

 

Should you confess now?

 

You should confess now.

 

Take out the bag of rose petals and open it over his head and tell him how crazy you are about him.

 

Do it.

 

No, that’s such an awful idea. Why the hell did you ever think rose petals were a good idea? Why do you have these in your bag? He’s a dude like you, not a cartoon character. He’s not going to grow sparkles in his eyes and clap his hands to his mouth and turn red and cry and say that he likes you too.

 

Where is John when you need him?

 

Fuck, how the hell did Dirk ever dig up the courage to confess to Jake, even if Jake wasn’t the right person for him? He didn’t tell you what he did, but you’re sure it didn’t involve what you’re thinking of now.

 

It’s so hard being 15 and having an all-consuming crush on your guy friend. 

 

“I have literally no idea what’s going on in your deranged fake-ironic coolkid mind, and I’m not sure I want to know. Are you sick? Is that what is preventing you from chatting my disturbed soul away? You look like you’re going through a mid-life crisis, Strider, and that’s a world of shit that you won’t fall into for a long time.”

 

“Shoot, you figured out what I’ve been practicing for the school talent show. I’m doing impressions and I’m going to impress the fuck out of you and John by acting out the existential soliloquies of a middle-aged salaryman. Damn you, Karkat Vantas. You are too good. You should be a lawyer or a detective, not a student at a shitty school.”

 

Karkat sighs and rolls his eyes dramatically. You smirk and send him a sidelong wink and he snorts in response. 

 

The walk to his apartment is much less tense now. You’re beginning to think that maybe you should just sit him down and tell him face-to-face that you like him and smile and try to make it all come naturally. He can’t reject you if you do your best to make him comfortable through it all too. You decide to believe that.

 

He opens his door and you follow him to the door to his room so you can drop off your backpacks before getting something to eat from his refrigerator. 

 

But the door to Kankri’s side of the apartment is open. 

 

And there are some muffled noises coming from his room.

 

And Karkat stops to look and freezes. He looks like he’s just seen the scene of a murder. His eyes are wide in absolute shock and his mouth has fallen open in a silent scream. You are at his side in an instant.

 

It takes you a long moment to recognize the people in the room, and an even longer moment for your mind to piece together what they are doing. But once you finally realize it, you feel like your whole world has been blown to pieces.

 

Kankri and Dirk are making out on Kankri’s bed like their survival depends on it.

 

No, change that into a different perspective.

 

Your brother and the brother of the guy you’ve had a crush on for ages--who is also one of your best bros--are making out like they want to crawl into each others’ skins. 

 

Suddenly, all you can think of is how hard it’s going to be to confess your feelings to Karkat now. A mad thought enters your mind and you run with it.

 

Literally. 

 

You grab Karkat’s arm and drag him to the door. He almost drops his backpack, but you pause to pull it onto your arm next to your own backpack. He follows you out the door, still shocked to the point of being unable to speak. You keep walking, his hand in yours, refusing to second-guess this decision and refusing to think of your brother and his brother--

 

No. You shake your head firmly.

 

Not going to think about that.

 

Stop.

 

He follows you to the roof of the building, and you lead him to an empty space between the too-many cactus gardens. You guide him down, but he still falls onto the ground pretty heavily. 

 

You touch his chin carefully with one hand and he looks up at you. 

 

“I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but I couldn’t. And now it seems kind of weird considering what we just saw, but I can’t keep this to myself anymore. Karkat, I’m crazy about you. I like the way you smile and talk and do everything and I want to kiss you and hold your hand and go on dates with you.”

 

“You have the most retarded timing ever, you snowflake.”

 

“I just really, really like you more than I’ve ever liked anything, even the idea of snow in Texas, and I’ve been trying to say it for months but I’m stupid and I’m so afraid of rejection and it’s so embarrassing, like admitting I’m the one who stole the skin mag from the principal’s office, but I don’t want what we saw to change how I feel or how you would react to how I feel, and God, that’s cheesier than Wisconsin, so I just want you to hear my stupid bleeding heart and I don’t think I care anymore if you think it’s not worth considering because, wow, our brothers were just macking on each other and I have no idea how I never saw that coming, but then again, it came out of nowhere like Invisible Man coming up and, no, I didn’t need to paint that image.”

 

You slap a hand over your face and bite at your lips in humiliation. Fuck, you just said that. You just told him you liked him. That did not go the way you wanted it to go.

 

You peel your fingers away from your eyes to see Karkat looking at you with more shock than when you saw your brothers together.

 

This is the part where he kills you. No, it’s the part where he pushes you off the roof for being so dumb. Or you’re the one who’s going to jump off the roof for being dumb. Hell, you could even open the bag of petals as you go down so it’s a romantic ending and he can see something that isn’t a total failure in your last moments before becoming street pizza.

 

Wait, this place has balconies, doesn’t it?

 

“Sure,” Karkat mutters.

 

You stare at him dumbly. “What?”

 

“That’s what you’re asking right? You want to... date me? Sure. Yes.”

 

“So... what we saw...”

 

“Is still crazier than monkeys descended from the same slime you crawled out of, but it’s not really my business who Kankri is doing stuff with.”

 

“Oh.”

 

The two of you sit in awkward silence for a moment. You really don’t know what to say or do to make this situation any less stiff and uncomfortable. You play with your hands for a while and jump when your phone vibrates but don’t make any attempt to answer it.

 

Eventually, Karkat gets up and you follow his motion. He takes his backpack from you. “Let’s just do something. Far from here. Just as two guys doing something.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And can you please text or call Dirk and tell him to stay at my place and I’m going to stay at your place? That’ll be okay with your brothers?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He’s staying at your place.

 

You tell yourself to stop thinking of dirty things, but your mind has a mind of its own.

 

And your hands have a mind of their own too, because you’ve just opened the bag and poured the rose petals out so the breeze catches them and blows them into Karkat’s face.

 

That definitely played out better in your hands’ minds. 

 

Karkat stares at you with disbelief for a moment.

 

“Please work on your timing. You’re an embarrassment to the this universe. If I was God, I would be shaking my head as I hid you in some void between universes so nobody would have to deal with your shenanigans.”

 

“But I bet you would come with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dave...


End file.
